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Ukraine

FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War

Backfired! How Russia's Playing Games With Gas Prices Became A Big Problem For Its War

A complex compensation mechanism for fuel companies, currency devaluation, increased demand due to the war, logistics disruptions, and stuttering production growth have combined to trigger price rises and deepening shortages at home in the Russian energy market. That is a real risk for the war in Ukraine.

Updated Sep. 20, 2023 at 3:20 p.m.

In Russia, reports of gasoline and diesel shortages have been making headlines in the country for several months, raising concerns about energy supply. The situation escalated in September when a major diesel shortage hit annexed Crimea. Even before that, farmers in the southern regions of Russia had raised concerns regarding fuel shortages for their combines.

“We’ll have to stop the harvest! It will be a total catastrophe!” agriculture minister Dmitry Patrushev had warned at the time. “We should temporarily halt the export of petroleum products now until we have stabilized the situation on the domestic market.”

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As the crisis deepens, experts are highlighting the unintended consequences of government intervention in fuel pricing and distribution.

The Russian government has long sought to control the prices of essential commodities, including gasoline and diesel. These commodities are considered "signalling products", according to Sergei Vakulenko, an oil and gas expert and fellow at the Carnegie Endowment. Entrepreneurs often interpret rising gasoline prices as a signal to adjust their pricing strategies, reasoning that if even gasoline, a staple, is becoming more expensive, they too should raise their prices.

The specter of the 2018 fuel crisis, where gasoline prices in Russia surged at twice the rate of other commodities, haunts the authorities. As a result, they implemented a mechanism to control these prices and ensure a steady supply. Known as the "fuel damper," this mechanism seeks to balance the profitability of selling fuel in both domestic and foreign markets.

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Fighting The Russian Army's Systematic Campaign Of Sexual Violence In Ukraine

Hundreds of sexual crimes have been officially reported in Ukraine following the full-scale invasion by the Russian army, though the actual number is likely 10 times higher. Ukrainian news website Livy Bereg explores how the nation is documenting the crimes and responding to support victims and bring perpetrators to justice.

KYIV — Let's start with the official numbers. Since the full-scale Russian invasion began in February 2022, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office has recorded 231 instances of conflict-related sexual violence. The aggressors target all demographic groups: men, women, children, and the elderly.

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Behind the official statistics are disturbing details, with 149 cases involving women and 82 cases involving men. Thirteen of the victims were minors, with 12 being girls and one a boy who also bore witness to his mother being raped. The youngest victim is 4 years old, while the oldest survivor is an 82-year-old female pensioner.

And these are only the officially documented cases. The actual number is likely to be 10 times higher.

Survivors often hesitate to speak out due to fear, trauma, and the social stigma attached to such incidents. This is changing, however, as more survivors of sexual abuse are coming forward to share their stories and receive the comprehensive legal, humanitarian, psychological, and medical support they need.

Mass sexual assault occurs wherever the Russian occupiers set foot. Most cases of sexual crimes have been documented in the de-occupied territories of the Kherson region. Following that are the Donetsk (55), Kyiv (52), Kharkiv (21), Zaporizhzhia (15), Chernihiv (5), Luhansk (3), and Sumy (2) regions.

“Ukraine needs to liberate its occupied territories to be able to work with all the victims,” says Iryna Didenko, who heads the Department of the Office of the Prosecutor General investigating such crimes.

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Zelensky In NYC, India-Canada Diplomatic Spat, Paywall Time For X?

👋 Mari mari!*

Welcome to Tuesday, where Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is in New York to attend the UN General Assembly, Azerbaijan launches “anti-terrorist” operations in Nagorno-Karabakh, and Elon Musk has floated the idea of putting up a paywall to X to fight bots on the platform formerly known as Twitter. Meanwhile, Gianluca Nicoletti in Italian daily La Stampa uses AI to commune with the dead.

[*Mapuche, Chile and Argentina]

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Sinking The Moskva, Inside Ukraine's Biggest Strike On The Russian Black Sea Fleet

As Ukraine steps up its attacks on the Black Sea fleet and other targets in Crimea, here's the inside story of Russia's devastating naval defeat in April, 2022.

Updated September 15, 2023 at 2:30 p.m.

KYIV — On April 13, 2022 the Russian military suffered its worst naval defeat in modern times when the flagship of Moscow’s fleet, the cruiser Moskva based in the Crimean port of Sevastopol, was sunk.

Based on dozens of interviews with Ukrainian military officials and viewing never-before-seen photos of the incident, Kyiv-based news service Ukrainian Pravda has conducted its own exclusive investigation to reconstruct how Ukraine successfully carried out the attack.

Russia still actively avoids any public references to the Moskva, and there are relatives of dead sailors who still have not received any information about the fate of their loved ones. The Russian Defense Ministry has offered no details about the causes of the sinking, claiming that the ship suffered "surfacing failure," after a fire. Moscow has made allusion to bad weather and claimed that all crew members had been rescued.

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Future
Pierre Haski

Is There Any Way To Rein In The Power Of Big Tech?

A new biography of the Tesla, X (formerly Twitter) and Space X boss reveals that Elon Musk prevented the Ukrainian army from attacking the Russian fleet in Crimea last year, by limiting the beam of his Starlink satellites. Unchecked power is a problem.

This article was updated Sept. 14, 2023 at 12:20 p.m

-OpEd-

PARIS — Nothing Elon Musk does leaves us indifferent. The billionaire is often admired for his audacity, and regularly criticized for his attitude and some of his decisions.

A biography of the founder and CEO of Tesla and Space X, came out today in the United States — 688 pages published by Simon & Schuster and written by William Isaacson (the renowned biographer of Steve Jobs and Albert Einstein).

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One revelation from this book is making headlines, and it's a big one. Elon Musk — brace yourselves — prevented the Ukrainian army from destroying the Russian Black Sea fleet last year.

A bit of context: Starlink, the communications and internet satellite constellation owned by Musk, initially enabled Ukraine to escape Russian blackout attempts.

But when the Ukrainian army decided to send naval drones to destroy Russian ships anchored in Crimea, it found that the signal was blocked. And Starlink refused to extend it to Crimea, because, according to Issacson, Musk feared it would trigger World War III.

It's dizzying, and raises serious questions.

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War
Ekaterina Mereminskaya

The Science Of Designing A Sanctions Model That Really Hurts Moscow

On paper, the scale of sanctions against Russia following its invasion of Ukraine is unprecedented. But opinion on the impact of sanctions remains divided in the absence of a reliable scientific foundation. A new study by Bank of Canada offers a way out.

-Analysis-

The world has never seen sanctions like those imposed against Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine. There have been targeted sanctions, of course, or sanctions against rogue countries like North Korea with wide support from the international community. But never in history has there been such a large-scale sanctions regime against one of the world’s biggest and most important economies.

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Here's the thing though: these sanctions were introduced in a hurry because the West needed to respond to the war decisively. No one calculated anything, they relied on generalizations and holistic visions, they were “groping in a dark room,” as Elina Rybakova, senior researcher at the Brussels think tank Bruegel, put it.

As a result, debates around the effectiveness of sanctions and how best to use them to influence Russia continue to do the rounds.

Supporters of sanctions have a clear and unified message: we must stop Russia from being able to continue this war. We must deprive them of the goods and technologies necessary for the production of weapons and military equipment, and prevent Russians from living normal lives.

Opponents argue that the sanctions backfire. They insist that Russia is a large enough economy, highly integrated into the energy market and international supply chains, and therefore has enough resilience to withstand restrictions. Those who impose sanctions will be the ones to lose markets and suppliers. They will face increased energy prices and countless other problems. Russia will be able to replace lost relationships with new and even stronger ties with other states.

Economists at the Bank of Canada have attempted to resolve this debate and figure out who is hit hardest by sanctions. They pieced together a model featuring three parties: a country imposing sanctions, a country against which they were imposed, and a third independent country.

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War
Yaroslav Vinokurov

If 3.3 Million Ukrainian Refugees Never Come Home? The Economics Of Post-War Life Choices

The war isn't the only thing that stands in the way of the homecoming of Ukrainian refugees. A lot depends on the efficiency of post-war economic recovery. A new study warns that up to 3.3 million won't be coming back after the fighting stops.

KYIV — Approximately 6.7 million Ukrainians have left their country since the Russian invasion. The longer the war lasts, the more these refugees will consolidate their new lives in their host countries, resulting in a heavy population drain for Ukraine.

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Earlier this month, the Kyiv-based Center for Economic Strategy (CES) presented a study on the attitudes of Ukrainian refugees that shows a large number of them will likely not return to their homeland even after the end of the war.

According to their calculations, Ukraine may lose 3.3 million citizens. There is also a strong likelihood that a large number of men currently fighting in the war will move abroad in order to reunite with their families that have settled there.

Even in peacetime, counting Ukrainians is not an easy task. A full-fledged census was conducted in the country only once: in 2001. It concluded that Ukraine had a population of 48.5 million.

After the Russian invasion in 2014, Ukraine was unable to compute how the population in the temporarily occupied territories had changed. According to latest calculations, as on February 1, 2022, an estimated 41.13 million people lived in the unoccupied territory.

After February 24, 2022, it became impossible to count the exact number of inhabitants, partly because the state does not have information on the number of Ukrainians who have fled the country as a result of the war.

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War
Szczepan Twardoch

Why Wars Don't Ever End — A Novelist's Notes From The Ukraine Front Line

In Warsaw-based daily Gazeta Wyborcza, Polish writer Szczepan Twardoch poses a crucial question on the front lines of the war in Ukraine: "What will you do when the war ends?" One answer struck him more than any other...

-Essay-

Even if Ukraine manages to defeat Russia, they will never agree to a loss.

Since June, I have been increasingly hearing that the war will end, which has led to several follow-up questions: What will Ukraine look like after the war? Will Volodymyr Zelensky run for president again? What will Russia be like afterwards? What will the security architecture of the two countries be?

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Over time, scholarly analyses of new strategies for victory suddenly replaced analyses of what the world would look like when the war was over.

But why? Is it because of overall fatigue with the war as a constant headline? Or maybe everyone has admitted that there may be no spectacular success for the Ukrainian counteroffensive, that there is a chance of a stalemate, and that it's better to think of what will happen going forward?

Maybe these conversations are already taking place, behind closed doors. Wars have often been fought during negotiations. Could it be that someone is already negotiating?

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Ideas
Ammar Azzouz

How Modern Warfare Warps A City's Future — Reflections Of An Architect From Homs, Syria

It has been almost 12 years since the author left his hometown, which was at the center of the Syrian uprising. He's made an academic career studying the impact of war on architecture and cities and researching acts of deliberate destruction.

OXFORD — It has been almost 12 years since I left my city. And I have never been able to return. Homs, the place I was born and grew up, has been destroyed and I, like many others, have been left in exile: left to remember how beautiful it once was. What can a person do when their home – that place within them that carries so much meaning – has effectively been murdered?

I have spent my academic career studying the impact of war on architecture and cities and researching acts of deliberate destruction of home, termed by scholars as domicide. Domus is the Latin word for home and domicide refers to the deliberate destruction of home – the killing of it. I have investigated how architecture, both at the time of war and peace, has been weaponized; wilfully targeted, bombed, burnt and contested. It has led me to publishing my first book, Domicide: Architecture, War, and the Destruction of Home in Syria.

From the burning of housing, land and property ownership documents, to the destruction of homes and cultural heritage sites, the brutal destruction in Homs, and other cities in Syria, has not only erased our material culture but also forcibly displaced millions.

Today, over 12 million people have been displaced from their homes within Syria, and beyond in countries such as Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Germany and Egypt. This destruction has been “justified” by the Syrian government and its allies, who claim these ordinary neighbourhoods are in fact “battlefields” in what they call a “war on terror and on terrorists”.

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Russia
Important Stories

How The Russian Orthodox Church Has Become A Willing Pawn In Putin's War

Since the start of Russia's war in Ukraine, the Russian Orthodox Church has fully supported the Kremlin. Priests or members of the church that disagree with this politicization and militarization of the church face heavy consequences such as removal.

Since March 2022, the Russian Orthodox Church has increasingly fallen in line with militarization efforts. Meanwhile, initial hopes that Orthodox Kyiv would welcome the invasion of Ukraine with open arms — hanging portraits of Moscow Patriarch Kirill and ringing bells — were quickly dashed.

As a result, Kirill adopted an increasingly hard line. He required priests to include a prayer for the "victory of Holy Russia" and threatened harsh consequences for those who used the word "peace" instead of "victory" in their prayers, calling them pacifist heretics.

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War
Piotr Szymański

With Ukraine's International Legion, On The Front Lines Of The Counteroffensive

What draws foreigners to fight in Ukraine? Is it bravery, gall, money — or something else? On the ground with the International Legion, Patryk Szymański investigates for Gazeta Wyborcza.

KYIV — Today, the International Legion selects soldiers more carefully than ever before. To get into the unit, it is not enough just to show up in Ukraine and hope to get into the action.

“If something spills out, hold it," Antoni said, opening his bag and handing me a gun. “Your elbow must be straight; you look into the sight and look for the red dot. This is how you take out the magazine. This is how you insert the next one. You have to push it with your hand. There is no safety — this weapon is always cocked."

I looked at the steppes stretching to the horizon, the towns visible in the distance and the single-lane route stretching in a straight line from Zhytomyr to Kyiv, which is paralyzed by air raid sirens several times a day. I looked at the gun in my hand, then at the Polish soldier next to me. What am I even doing here?

Lee didn't hesitate for a moment. He set out from Liverpool, landed in Poland, then crossed into Ukraine by land. As millions fled from danger, he walked towards it.

He arrived in Kyiv in March, two months before I did. The northern half of the city was still under siege, and massacres were ongoing in Bucha and Hostomel. The rest of the world wouldn’t hear about them for another few weeks.

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Japan
Newsletter by Anne-Sophie Goninet, Valeria Berghinz and Michelle Courtois

U.S. To Send Controversial Shells To Kyiv, Mexico Decriminalizes Abortion, Vi$it V€nice

👋 Dumêlang!*

Welcome to Thursday, where the U.S. says it will supply Ukraine with controversial uranium-based anti-tank shells, Mexico throws out all criminal penalties for abortions, and Venice will soon start charging daytrippers. Meanwhile, for French economic daily Les Echos, Leïla Marchand looks at the “Wild West” of bosses monitoring their remote workers.

[*Northern Sotho, South Africa]

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